Peggy Noonan has decided that "standing for principles" and not voting for them is ... "grown-up."

Having written a book like this, them's fightin' words. Avoiding consequences, taking shortcuts, shirking responsibilities -- all comprise the m.o. of the hopelessly immature, a category fit for any US senator who, believing Justice should be blind and not a perpetual grievance avenger, votes to confirm Sonia Sotomayor. This remains true no matter how many soothing adjectives -- "serious," "calm," "judicious" -- Noonan intones to cloak such undutiful irresponsibility.

What she and others such as Charles Krauthammer are advocating is nothing less than Taxidermy Conservatism--all stuffed shirts, hot air and no action. No blood, either. Just plenty o' "calm" as Peggy's GOP votes itself into an airless and dusty oblivion.

Good news from the Thomas More Law Center about its extremely important lawsuit accusing the US government of using taxpayer money to promote Islam and sharia (Islamic law) through its AIG bailout:

In his well-written and detailed analysis issued yesterday, Judge Zatkoff denied the request by the Obama administration’s Department of Justice to dismiss the lawsuit. The request was filed on behalf of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the Federal Reserve Board – the named defendants in the case. In his ruling, the judge held that the lawsuit sufficiently alleged a federal constitutional challenge to the use of taxpayer money to fund AIG’s Islamic religious activities.
Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, commented, “It is outrageous that AIG has been using taxpayer money to promote Islam and Shariah law, which potentially provides support for...

...and the moral of this week's Sotomayor column is, Please, Conservatives, don't Roll Over and Play Dead.

This week's syndicated column

Frank Ricci is "just" a fireman, and not, like Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor, a federal judge. He is "only" a white male, and not, like Sotomayor, a "Latina." And while he works in New Haven, Conn., he certainly didn't attend Yale Law School as Sotomayor did.
For one thing, he's dyslexic. That's why Ricci spent more than $1,000 to pay an acquaintance to make recordings of the educational materials Ricci needed to master in order to pass a 2003 test that was specially drawn...

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank found Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs' tongue-tie-ups over questions about Sonia Sotomayor's supremacist race theories -- namely, that the "rich experiences" of the "wise Latina woman" make her a better judge than the "white male" -- worth reporting more or less verbatim. The questions carommed off Newt Gingrich's contention that the Supreme Court nominee should withdraw.

Milbank writes:

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich joined the chorus. "A white man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw," he wrote on his blog. "Latina woman racist should also withdraw."

My favorite: Dump our supposed "allies" from what Muthuswamy calls the Axis of Jihad -- namely, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (the other A of J country is Iran) -- and decisively bond with our natural allies already fighting jihad such as India and Israel. While we have good relations with the latter countries, we minimize their roles, or even exclude them altogether, from openly aiding in "war on terror" out of fear of offending Islam. (This is part of our wholly misguided, if so far regrettably victorious War on Muslim Alienation.)

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn't lived that life." -- Judge Sonia Sotomayor, in her Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law in 2001.

BH Obama has nominated a race- and sex- supremacist to the Supreme Court.

Marriage is on the rocks. And I'm not talking about the Supreme Court, acts of Congress, "civil union," or Miss America. By personal fiat, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just sounded yet another death knell for what we must now categorize as "traditional marriage" by extending benefits reserved for the spouses of State Department employees "to all unmarried domestic partners -- both same-sex and heterosexual."

These include, according to yesterday's A6 Washington Post story, "paid travel to and from overseas posts, shipments of household effects, visas and diplomatic passports, emergency travel to visit ill or injured partners, and evacuation in case of a security emergency or medical necessity."

I don't who gets to play the Dotty Lamour part, but this has got to be a buddy movie/road picture in the making. What laughs! What chemistry!

Only problem is, of course, four's a crowd. That is, there's no room for the US in this story. The points of this love triangle -- Hamid-Mahmoud-Ali -- are all clearly taken.

Which is a good thing. If Hamid hearts Mahmoud hearts Ali, this is one foreign affair the US should keep its men and $$$ -- its tens of thousands of men and it billions and billions of $$$ -- out of. Get it?

Had lunch with a Marine officer who has served three tours in Iraq. He remains extremely disturbed about the ROE (rules of engagement), which he said grew increasingly constricting. He talked, for example, about the insanity of repeatedly arresting and releasing (and arresting and releasing again) enemy fighters, and noted "you can't shoot someone setting an IED...."

Why not? Why couldn't the US have announced that IED-booby-trappers would be shot? The message could have been broadcast in mosques, through leaflets, the works. It seems like the grossest act of US civilian and US military negligence not to have done so, particularly looking back on all our (Iranian-made) IED casualties in Iraq. Such a common-sense policy, however, isn't PC, and PC always comes first.

AP Photo: Afghans railing against a January 2009 U.S. strike that killed 15 Taliban forces "but," as the AP caption put it, "village elders who quickly traveled to speak with government officials said the dead were all civilians." Shakedown time? Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen says these are the people whose "trust" our troops need to win. As I wrote earlier, how's about if he goes first?
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This week's column examines the mindless logic of pursuing "victory" in Afghanistan through waging what is looking more and more like a "war on civilian casualties." Our leadership, military and civilian, has decided that eliminating Afghan civilian casualties (bogus or not) is the surefire way to win Afghan hearts and minds. They don't say "hearts and minds," of course; they say "trust." But it's the same darn, stupid thing....

AP Photo: Some of the thousands of Afghans who protested an American strike on the Taliban/"civilian casulaties," East of Kabul, in January 2009. Admiral Mullen has ordered US forces to win their "trust." Idea: How's about if he goes first?

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Afghanistan is already dubbed "Obama's War," but there's another possible father to this misbegotten conflict: David Kilcullen, the Australian former aide to Gen. Petraeus in Iraq.

(Kilcullen, of course, is infamous for the following, utterly mindless, equal parts stupid and putrid comment: "If I were a Muslim, I'd probably be a jihadist. The thing that drives these guys -- a sense of adventure, wanting to be part of the moment, wanting to be in the big movement of history that's happening now -- that's the same thing that drives me, you know?")

Kilcullen popped up in today's NYT, toward the end of yet another appalling story about US officials, including the new US ambassador to Afghanistan LTG Eikenberry (ret.), who have been snookered into going to war in Afghanistan ... in order to avoid "civilian casualties." You thought it was to "defeat" the Taliban and win one for our great ally in counter-jihad, the Afghan people (harhar)? Even that idiotic idea is now beside the point.

Via Sandro Magister's Chiesa, a website that reports on the Catholic Church and Islamic matters, a horrifying travelogue through the Islamicized, sharia-compliant heart of islam's European capital, Rotterdam.

Photo: "Muslim women in Rotterdam." It is from an exhibition in 2008 by the Dutch photographers Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek.

The article was first printed in the Italian newspaper Il Foglio on May 14, Magister notes, the second in a major seven-part survey on Holland....

I just read Mark Steyn's Commentary piece, "Israel Today, the West Tomorrow," which surveys the ghoulishly vicious and rising anti-Semitism in Europe that is correlated to the continent's burgeoning Islamic populations. This poison serves to corrode further Europe's support for Israel.

Missing, however, is an explanation for Islamic anti-Semitism that goes deeper than what is commonly misperceived as a mere territorial dispute. In other words, even in the flagship publication of the American Jewish Committee, there is no indication that Islamic anti-Semitism is in fact sacralized within Islam by a copious body of foundational documents that essentially commands Muslims to hate and kill Jews -- and drive the former dhimmis-restored-to-glory...

This week's column weighs in othe Great Cheney Debate: Are we less safe under Barack Obama?
Dick Cheney has been decrying the national security policies of the Obama administration -- closing Guantanamo Bay, ending enhanced interrogations of captured jihadists, even preparing to release some into the United States -- because the former vice president says they leave this country more vulnerable to a terrorist attack.
"That's my belief," Mr. Cheney told CBS' "Face the Nation" this week. "I think to the extent that those (Bush-era) policies were responsible for saving lives, that the administration is now trying to cancel those policies ... means in the future we're not going to have the same safeguards we've had for the last eight years."
I agree the new policies make...

"Just yards from the barrier separating Israelis and Palestinians," as the New York Times put it, the Pope "expressed solidarity on Wednesday with `all the homeless Palestinians who long to be able to return to their birthplace, or live permanently in a homeland of their own.' "

Sounds as if the pontiff is pushing the Israel-finisher of so-called "right of return" to boot....

Photo: From "Make Me a Muslim," an old credit of the BBC's new religious director Aaqil Ahmed.

The BBC has a new religious programming director, and he is a Muslim. An undercurrent of not-quite-articulated consternation seems to flow through many Brit media accounts of this "first," most of which exempts the new director, Aaqil Ahmed, himself. This main line of argument sticks to the plain statistical fact that Britain remains a Christian country, with 70 percent of the population C of E, and only 2 to 3 percent Muslim -- so why should the Beeb put such a post in Muslim hands? The main exception is a piece titled "Hire a Muslim, Just Not This Muslim," but even this piece is a little oblique as to Ahmed's career. That is, what has Ahmed actually done...

"Obama mentioned a medicine called Tamiflu... [Its manufacturer] is none other than Rumsfeld... [An] influential member on the board of directors of Gilead Sciences [Company]... All its shareholders are Zionists...."

Therefore....?!

Further "proof": "It is interesting that last year, [Rumsfeld] bought, if I'm not mistaken, 18 billion dollars worth of new Gilead stocks," said some doctor of some Iranian university.

If he's not mistaken?

Such dada-esque propaganda is laughable but not at all funny, if you know what I mean. It's just more acid unreason with which to further corrode anti-Semitic, anti-American Iranian minds.

Coalitions hold together when members share a mutually reviled Public Enemy #1. In Afghanistan, ours, I guess, is the Taliban--although, as I have written here, the Taliban per se pose no security threat to the United States that can't be eliminated as needed by implementing what MG Paul Vallely (USA ret.) describes as the "lily pad strategy" (which can also take care of Pakistani nukes, he says). The general's point is, defending American interests wherever threats develop requires no troop presence in Afghanistan.

Tragically, however, we have one and it is getting much bigger.

Meanwhile, however, our putative ally Afghanistan has a different Public Enemy #1 in mind--civiliian casualties incurred in our supposedly shared fight against the Taliban.

As you might have heard, September 29 -- which, as Andrew Walden points out, is really September 11 according to the Julian calendar -- is now Happy Islam Day in the great state of Hawaii, supposed birthplace of Dear Leader (but maybe not). Roger Kimball has more here. According to the Washington Post, "the bill seeks to recognize `the rich religious, scientific, cultural and artistic contributions' that Islam and the Islamic world have made...."

Dick Cheney is speaking out against the policies of the Obama administration, saying they leave this country more vulnerable to a terrorist attack. The Wash Times reports:

Mr. Cheney said that [the Obama] administration's dismantling of many of the policies and protections instituted by President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks — including the planned closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba and halting controversial prisoner interrogation techniques — have made the country more vulnerable to future attacks.

"That's my belief," Mr. Cheney said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "I think to the extent that those [Bush-era] policies were responsible for saving...

Photo: Comrade Lenin warming up the crowd for Comrades Obama, Rattner and Geithner

War on Capitalism Alert:

News came down Friday that the informal group of creditors balking at the White House shakedown -- I mean, Chrysler bid -- agreed to disband group oppposition to the deal. I saw a few stories about this, which included this excerpt of statement released by the group's lead lawyer Thomas E. Lauria:

“After a great deal of soul-searching and quite frankly agony, Chrysler’s non-TARP lenders concluded they just don’t have the critical mass to withstand the enormous pressure and machinery of the US government. As a result, they have collectively withdrawn their participation in the court case.”

Yes, that's the same Thomas E. Lauria who publicly charged the White House with threatening client Perella Weinsten last week in a radio interview. I looked around for the full statement and here it from Campaign for Liberty via NY Times DealBook:

When the anti-Islamization movement reconvened this weekend in Cologne/Koln, Germany, European supporters, among them Filip Dewinter of the Flemish independence party Vlaams Belang, succeeded in speaking out. I have included his remarkably bold and astute speech of defiance and reclamation, courtesy Gates of Vienna, below.

Things were different last time around for Pro-Koln when the city's mayor sanctioned mass thuggery-- Orwellianly mislabeled "anti-fascism" -- to shut down the lawful demonstration -- Orwellianly mislabeled as "fascism," also "Nazism." If we must stick with the old lexicon, forcibly...

Last weekend's GOP-lite event was packed, so they say, but oh-so-empty as Jeb Bush, Eric Cantor and Mitt Romney prated on about how Republicans--or, rather, non-Democrats, because according the Wash Post, they rarely used the "R" word--need to be "forward looking" and "relevant" and start a "conversation" with voters around the country....zzzzzzzz.

Are they kiddding?

"I'm glad to hear them keep talking about listening," a man described as a "Republican activist" said.

And this was on the level. So was Jeb Bush's comment carried in the Wash Times about the need to drop the "nostalgia" for "the good old days," which the Times quite naturally interpreted as...

Not enough people smell a rat when it comes to Obama's manipulation of the Chrysler bankruptcy--certainly not with "owned lackeys" making up most of the media. Here are a few journalists and one pol who can explain why the Obama takeover of Chrysler is so bad for our country.

Think carefully about what’s happening here. The White House, presumably car czar Steven Rattner and deputy Ron Bloom, is seeking to transfer the property of one group of people to another group that is politically favored [the UAW]. In the process, it is setting aside basic property rights in favor of rewarding the United Auto Workers for the support the union has given the Democratic Party. The only possible limit on the White House’s power is the bankruptcy judge, who might not go along.

A signal moment has come in President Obama's administration: Citizens are beginning to speak out about its thuggish, strong-arm and surreal takeover of the US economy. Why? Because, in the bold words of hedge fund manager Clifford S, Asness, the free enterprise system "is not the owned lackey of the oval office to be scolded for disobedience by the president."

Wonder what John Nance Garner, best remembered for his comment that the vice presidency wasn't worth a bucket of warm spit (or something), would have said about Arlen Specter's new status as Democratic Newbie on all of his former committees?

Seems that Dem leader Harry Reid promised 79-year-old Specter the world--namely, that the 79-year-old senator would retain his 29 years of seniority if he simply changed his mascot from elephant to donkey.But my, my, things look different in the cold light of the Democratic dawn -- even after that "standing ovation" Harry Reid told The Hill Specter received at his first Democratic policy luncheon yesterday. Or was it simply "warm" even "strong" applause, but no standing O, as three (3) senators anonymously...

I would like to reiterate on this day the OIC’s staunch commitment to the principles of the freedom of expression and the freedom of the press, not merely as fundamental human rights in the broadest sense of the term, but, just as importantly, as noble values and inalienable universal principles so long as they do not breach the freedom of others or dent their right to their beliefs and cultural ideals.

The latest from Mahmoud Abbas -- PA leader, Holocaust denier and Obama's first phone call as president -- is that "he will tell US President Barack Obama this month that resuming peace talks with Israel hinges on its approval of a two-state solution," reports AFP.

Meanwhile, back at al-ranch, Abbas is not at all boosting the notion of two states, certainly not in Arabic. Palestinian Media Watch notes that in an address before the Palestinian Youth Parliament broadcast on PA TV on April 27, Abbas derided the very idea of Israel--and to warm applause. He said:

"What is a 'Jewish state?' We call it, the 'State of Israel.' You can call yourselves whatever you want. But I will not accept it. And I say this on a live broadcast... It's not my job to define it, to provide a definition for the state and what it contains. You can call yourselves the Zionist Republic, the Hebrew, the National, the Socialist [Republic] call it whatever you like. I don't care."

So, Defense Secretary Gates now confirms for the first time that, yes, the Obama administration intends to release "some" Uighurs into the US--said Uighurs being the 17 Chinese Muslims at GItmo whom Andy McCarthy describes as being "steeped in jihadist ideology, trained in explosives and assassination tactics, and anxious enough to get that way that they high-tailed it from China to Afghanistan to become more lethal terrorists."

Why?

Gates's argument to a Senate appropriations subcommittee went like this: "It's difficult for the State Department to make the argument to other countries they should take these people that we have deemed in this case not to be dangerous if we won't take any of them ourselves," he said.

I wasn't kidding when I wrote in this week's column that "at the end of Swine Flu, Week One, the first line of flu defense at the U.S.-Mexican border are American bus drivers spraying their buses with cans of Lysol."

It's true. See here to read about the Lysol-plus-Clorox defense one Fort Worth company is deploying to prevent its buses from bringing in more flu cases on its Oklahoma-Fort Worth-Austin-Juventino Rosas route (Juventino Rosas is in the Mexican state of Guanajuato), and see here how a Houston company, "one of dozens...

Check out the wheels: $540 bucks on the hoof. The First Lady's hoof, er, hooves.

The economy contracts at more than 6 percent in the last quarter (not that the "enchanted" White House press corps asked the Celebresident Obama about that); Chrysler declares Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and many cities are posting double digit jobless rates; and Michelle goes gauche and garish with metallic pink toed "trainers" by Lanvin.

As the Left in Europe is increasingly characterized by its appeasement of Islam and an acidifying anti-Semitism, Dutch MP Geert Wilders (above, outside the US Senate), an opposition leader on the Right, rallies the Dutch people with his stalwart defense of Western civilization, his opposition to the encroachments of sharia law in his country and the wider West, and his always staunch defense of Jews and Israel, which he rightly sees as a nation on the front lines against the jihad in progress against the non-Muslim world.